After four years of construction, the Amerikahaus on Munich's Karolinen-Plaza was reopened on 29 June. In the course on the general refurbishment, it was equipped with, among other things, a new cinema and sound system, for which the special technical and acoustic design department of OBERMEYER took over full responsibility.

 

【THE BACKGROUND】 

The so-called Amerikahäuser (lit. “America Houses”) in Germany were opened after the Second World War. It had a mission to convey to the German society the history of America and a mutual understanding of American and  German culture.

Today it is a Bavarian institution, an open house dedicated to cultural relations and American research. The extensive range of events includes lectures, discussions, seminars, exhibitions, concerts, literature readings, films and theatre performances in English language. With these various activities, Amerikahaus was attracting more than 50,000 visitors to come each year.

【FOUR YEARS OF GENERAL REFURBISHMENT】

No wonder that the general refurbishment measures of the last four years have given particular importance to the technical upgrade, in particular, the new cinema technology and surround sound system as well as an extended event media system for the large theatre hall. For the complete planning of this comprehensive upgrade, OBERMEYER had been commissioned to take charge of work from the basic concept design to construction monitoring and quality assurance.

In particular, the responsibility included the assessment of fit-out requirements, the acoustic assessment and finally the planning of the entire event system as well as the media control with all necessary interfaces in compliance with the requirements of the building’s heritage protection. In addition, there were high aesthetic and advanced technological requirements for the design.

The historical heritage protection aspect was the biggest challenge for the architects, as it made it impossible to work with the usual large theatre systems. Instead, the smallest possible systems had to be chosen and individually configured.

【SMART BUILDING TECHNOLOGY FOR SPECIAL USE】

Smart building projects such as this are supervised by an expert team of OBERMEYER, which combines specialists in the audio, video and broadcast technology department. One of the refined solutions from them is a special "beam steering" technology, which can be used to control the sound and adapt it to the respective acoustic and sound system situation as required for highest HiFi pleasure of listening.

This was done by changing the radiation characteristics of the front loudspeakers and enables a particularly homogeneous sound distribution depending on the type of event: powerful for cinema operation, restrained but tonal transparent for music and clear in comprehensibility at spoken language events.

Only through planned mobile systems adapted to the room and the type of event with sophisticated and highly efficient control technology was it possible to guarantee this individual quality. This cutting-edge technology has also made it possible to automate the most complex adjustment processes and thus make the operation as simple as possible for the operators.

Photo 1 to 4: Amerikahaus Munich / Herbert Stolz

Photo 5：Cinema projector in the screening room of the theatre

Photo 6: Projection and control system in the demonstration room

Photo7: Amerikahaus (left) with Karolinen-Plaza in the foreground